The Tunisian state appears both open and cautious to accommodating civil society.

Over the past few months, Tunisia has witnessed several victories for civil society, with the government making moves to promote gender equality in particular. Yet contradictory actions by the president’s office and parliament, which established a National Registry for Institutions on July 27, capture the Tunisian state’s appearance of being both open to and cautious about accommodating civil society during the democratic transition. […]

For Tunisia to reach its full democratic potential, the state must continue to strengthen its relationship with civil society and build trust with its leaders. The state must continue to listen to civil society grievances and consider their policy recommendations through formal mechanisms such as the Truth and Dignity Commission tasked with addressing past grievances and transitional justice. The state should also continue to engage civil society members and work with them on legislation as it did on the violence law.

Maro Youssefis a fifth-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology. She is also affiliated with the Center for Women and Gender Studies, the Power, History, and Society Network, the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and the Urban Ethnography Lab. Her research interests include democracy, women’s rights, civil society, and the Middle East and North Africa.

Today the United States Senate voted narrowly to advance the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to a final confirmation vote, which will take place this Saturday. If confirmed, Kavanaugh will enjoy a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The vote took place in the wake of a polarizing public hearing in which a woman, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, gave a testimony accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault. During the hearing, Kavanaugh angrily denied the accusation, repeatedly interrupting, raising his voice, demanding answers to questions he himself was being asked, and decrying what he has called a “circus,” a “national disgrace,” and a “vicious” attack on his family and good name.

The Kavanaugh hearing has dominated the news cycle for weeks. It has sent waves of anger, sadness, confusion, frustration, and loss across the country, leaving many of us reeling and unsure how to process our emotions, let alone make sense of the situation.

Fortunately, a variety of social science researchers have published sociological responses to the hearings. This post is an effort to consolidate and share those works of public sociology. The following list includes analyses from scholars with expertise in the areas of law, race, class, gender, sexuality, and sexual violence.

In this New York Times op-ed, law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who introduced the term “intersectionality,” offers instructive words for white feminists and anti-racists. She shows that what many of us assume justice should look like—be it the outcome or the process—neglects to consider black women’s specific needs and circumstances:

I watched Anita Hill testify as a member of her support team. I worried that she would be trapped between an antiracist movement that foregrounded black men, and a feminism that could not fully address how race shaped society’s perception of black victims. …

Such colorblind feminism did a profound disservice to Ms. Hill. And it marked another key moment of political erasure — in this case, one that effaced modern feminist history. Treating the racial backdrop of the hearing as just noise meant that we missed an opportunity to create a nuanced understanding of sexual harassment. In the great awakening around sexual harassment, race was politely ushered offstage.

Masculinities scholar Sarah Diefendorf analyzes the discourses being proffered in defense of Kavanaugh. She points out that these defenses characterize men’s proclivity to commit sexual violence as something that individual “bad guys” do, and elide the reality that sexual violence is part of a system of masculine domination:

When Kavanaugh or other men respond to allegations of sexual assault by making themselves look like good guys, they’re trying to pin the blame on other “bad” men as failures of masculinity. This good guy defense is brilliant. It allows men to make the problem of sexual assault and rape about being an individual ― the work of bad men, not a bad culture ― when we know that it is actually a widespread cultural problem. When men point to others as the problem, we are left with individual accounts, denials, and explanations that hide the overarching theme in all of them: masculinity and dominance.

This good guy rhetoric repeats the same cycle we are all taught at an early age: that men are in charge of the conversation and of women’s bodies and that women’s voices are dismissed or berated when we dare speak up.

Sociologist Nicole Bedera, who studies adolescent sexual violence, synthesizes findings from social science about sexual violence. Her blog post (in addition to this Twitter thread) offers context for the hearing by sharing evidence not typically acknowledged in public discourse about sexual violence:

We generally think of sexual violence—and particularly its perpetration—as something rare. When we do recognize sexual misconduct as a common experience, we tend to focus on victimization and the stories we heard during the beginnings of #MeToo and imagine serial rapists as the primary perpetrators of sexual assault. However, sexual assault perpetration is similarly ordinary. According to one of the most recent and rigorous studies, as many as 10.8% of college-attending young men commit an act of rape before graduating (Swartout et al. 2015). The rate might be alarming, but the reasons are different than we traditionally think. … The allegations against Judge Kavanaugh are consistent with what sociologists know about sexual violence: it’s common, rooted in male bonding, and situational.

Shamus Khan, whose 2012 book Privilege is an ethnography of an elite boarding school that Khan himself attended, examines the classed dimensions of the hearing. He details how elite institutions such as those Kavanaugh attended (Georgetown Prep, Yale College, and Yale Law School) socialize their members to believe they are entitled to positions of power, special treatment, and the ability to break rules with impunity:

Kavanaugh’s privilege runs deep, and it shows. He grew up in a wealthy Washington suburb where his father spent three decades as CEO of a trade association. There has been a sense among his supporters that his place is deserved, which mirrors the climate of aristocratic inheritance he grew up around. … This collective agreement that accountability doesn’t apply to Kavanaugh (and, by extension, anybody in a similar position who was a youthful delinquent) may help explain why he seems to believe he can lie with impunity — a trend he continued on Thursday, when he informed senators he hadn’t seen the testimony of his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, even though a committee aide told the Wall Street Journal he’d been watching. In his furious interview with the panel that afternoon, Kavanaugh appeared astonished that anybody might impugn his character or try to keep him from the seat he is entitled to. ‘I’m never going to get my reputation back,’ he complained.

Katie K. Rogers is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at UT Austin. Her research is on race, gender, and the legal cannabis industry in the United States. You can follow her on Twitter at @katie_k_rogers.

Mounira M. Charrad, PhD, is a nonresident fellow with the Women’s Rights in the Middle East Program and an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on state formation, colonialism, law, citizenship, kinship, gender politics and women’s rights.

Maro Youssef is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on gender politics, democratization and civil society.

Doctoral student Alex Diamond has a piece up on North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) based on summer fieldwork on farmers and dissident violence in Briceño, Antioquia.

Hunger and lack of opportunity aren’t the only things driving youth to join [the dissidence]. Community leaders say the dissident group harnesses fear and anger against state institutions, including the military and the government’s failure to follow through with the promises of the peace process. The people of Briceño understand the substitution as a quid pro quo agreement: we pull out our coca plants, in exchange, the government gives us the necessary support to develop new economic activity. They feel cheated, tricked into pulling out the coca plants that fed their children based on the expectation of government aid that has yet to materialize.

Alex Diamond is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the implementation of the peace accords between the FARC and the Colombian government and the transition in areas previously under insurgent control.

UT Austin sociology doctoral student Eldad Levy has written an op-ed for OpenDemocracy on the effects of violence in Mexican society.

He writes:

After Syria, Mexico is today the most violent country in the world. What is worse: Mexico is falling apart as a political community. For over a decade now, as a result of the drug wars, Mexico has been systematically disintegrating as a territorial sovereign state in many parts of the country. Poverty, impunity and the ensuing violence are tearing apart any remnants of a sense of social solidarity. […]

The neoliberalization of the Mexican economy has not only failed miserably in bringing prosperity to the population, it has also failed in terms of much simpler standards such as economic growth: since 2000, Mexico has grown on average at a yearly rate of 2%. While President Trump is fond of focusing his rhetoric against trade with Mexico, the Free Trade Agreement has been a disaster for the Mexican working class and the farmers.

The annual meeting of the American Sociological Association is here, with a strong showing from scholars from the UT Austin sociology department. For quick reference, we compiled a list of presentations, talks, discussions, and more featuring our own UT Austin sociologists:

Saturday, August 11th:

8:30 to 10:10am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 406

Emily Paine: “Embodied Disruption: Sorting Out Gender and Nonconformity in the Doctor’s Office”

8:30 to 10:10am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 405

Robert Ressler: “Can Community Nonprofits Help Children from Diverse Families Learn on a National Scale?”

There are many resources in Austin allotted to ending homelessness, including a nearly two million dollar grant for the Innovation Team “to experiment with new ways to house the homeless” (http://projects.austintexas.io), and $18.2 million for a complex with 50 furnished housing units and mental health counseling and substance abuse treatment funded by The Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The city of Austin uses a “housing first” model to combat homelessness, which prioritizes shelter and medical needs above all else. In a recent report, the city of Austin Innovation Team suggests that this approach is limited and contributes to deteriorating mental and physical health. They suggest a model that is centered around social, emotional, and mental health needs along with the rest (shelter, food, income, etc.) as part of a comprehensive, holistic approach to dealing with the “problem of homelessness”. After spending a semester doing ethnographic fieldwork with homeless service institutions and people in Austin experiencing homelessness, we suggest that rather than trying to end homelessness, perhaps the focus could be on initiatives that make homelessness less bad, less scary, and less dangerous for those experiencing it. The following points were shared at a presentation on Tuesday May 1st , 2018:

Students prepare for the presentation to Austin homeless service providers

1) Social Networks, by Jess Goldstein-Kral. The Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH), is a location where there are services and day-sleep for all people experiencing homelessness and serves as a men’s shelter at night. There is ongoing conversation about the space right outside the ARCH where many people gather. Business owners are concerned about it as an eyesore, service providers are concerned that it scares away people who need services, the city is concerned that is a hub for selling K2, prostitution, or other illegal activities.

What seems to be missing from this discourse is that this gathering place is an integral aspect of people’s social networks. It operates as an alternative or supplementary source of services and support for people experiencing homelessness. People share phones, food, clothing, sell leftovers, and receive donations that are dropped off here. Others do business, both legal and illegal, which serves both for income as well as relationship building. Couples can sleep next to each other outside the ARCH, which is prohibited in homeless shelters and nearly impossible for heterosexual couples do to the gender segregation of shelters.

2) Sex and Privacy, by Jamie O’Quinn. The people sitting outside the ARCH might be considered a nuisance or an eyesore, but they also do not really have anywhere else to go. Experiencing homelessness means that you are constantly visible. For example, if you’re sleeping outside, in a bunk room at a shelter, or on a mat at ARCH or Salvation Army on the 1st floor, you are visible to either the public, staff and volunteers, or other people experiencing homelessness.

Not having access to privacy also means that people have limited access to sex that is private and pleasurable. While the Condom Distribution Network distributes condoms to people experiencing homelessness, at the ARCH and at other locations, there exists no free, public space where it is legal for people to have sex.

For instance, Daniel, a 46 year-old Hispanic man, told me that he had sex in port-a-johns so that he can have sex in a private place. Taylor, a 30 year-old Black man, told me that he either saves up money to have sex in a motel or has sex outside with a “lookout” so that he can have privacy.

3) Invisibility, by Alex Diamond. Being constantly visible not only structures outer activities but can also result in an internalization of invisibility. One man experiencing homelessness, Tyler, speaks about his time staying by Lady Bird Lake: “You get used to a public audience, get used to having to do things in view of public. You block that out. People become a blur. It’s as if you don’t exist, it’s as if you’re invisible. Generally they don’t acknowledge your existence. You begin to feel invisible. Because of that, you’re a little more relaxed about having to do certain things like comb your hair. That becomes background. That becomes a blur. They become as invisible to you as you become to them.”

To circle back to the opening point – there are a lot of initiatives on homelessness in Austin, they put housing first, community first, or user needs first, what we hope to do here is to put the experience of people who are homeless front and center, not necessarily as users or clients but as people who seek out privacy, dignity, and safety. Tyler, among the many poignant and insightful things he said also brings the issue to its core: “they can tell you a million places they don’t want you to be, but they can’t tell you where to go”. This quote sheds light on the crux of the issue: there is nowhere for people experiencing homelessness to just be.

Professor Harel Shapira responds to a question about positionality at the Q&A

To conclude, there seems to be a mismatch between what services are provided, and what people experiencing homelessness need and value. Perhaps services could be designed with more user input, there could be explicit efforts to include people experiencing homelessness in decision making processes, and programs to serve the homeless could be more effective if there was an explicit role for people who either previously or currently experience homelessness.

Marta Ascherio is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and a graduate fellow of the Urban Ethnography Lab. Her research interests include immigration, crime, and social control.

But the end of the semester also marks the end of Michael Schmidt’s first year as the Graduate Program Administrator of the Sociology department. I interviewed Michael for this short blog piece to learn more about him, and to thank him for a great first year.

Michael’s roots at the UT go deep. He began at UT as an undergraduate History major, excelling as a History Honors student, and went on to the graduate program to earn his PhD in History in 2014. His dissertation was titled, “The Multi-Sensory Object: Jazz, the Modern Media, and the History of the Senses in Germany.” Soon after earning his PhD, he worked as an Academic Advisor in the History Department, where he was awarded a 2016 Texas Exes James W. Vick Award for Academic Advising. He was then promoted to Graduate Coordinator of the Department of French and Italian. This year, we were fortunate enough to welcome him as the Graduate Program Administrator of the Sociology department.

Michael infuses the department with positive energy. Whether he is advising graduate students, passing out chocolate near the printers, or participating in a departmental event, his kindness and generosity are ever-present. What he loves about being part of a university is the constant exposure to other ways of thinking and new fields of knowledge. In our conversation, he recounts a time when he sat in on a Fem(me) Sem meeting, and saw that the types of questions that historians and sociologists ask are similar but also quite different. Group members asked many questions around “the nitty-gritty” of social dynamics whereas his first questions revolved around transformation over time. Michael says, “Being around sociologists is like a new education.”

Michael’s research interests are largely centered on the history of popular music and the changing ways in which the public perceives these media. He asks fascinating questions such as: how is cultural meaning produced and transformed over time? What is the relationship between material transformations in sound reproduction technology and the shifting cultural meanings of popular music? How do these shifts reflect changes in the audience and social position of the music across history? In speaking with Michael, I was reminded of the value of contemplating the social world from multiple disciplinary standpoints. Just as being around sociologists has been educational for Michael, it was also educational for me to think from a historian’s perspective.

In his words, a graduate program is “like a laboratory for developing one’s mind and capacity to analyze the world… maybe it’s the historian in me, but I like to see the transformation of students.” Ever generous and warm, he tells me that he considers it a privilege to see the work that students are doing because it is like “peeking into the future of the discipline.” However, he also knows that things can get difficult, which is why he works to support and advocate for students throughout the process.

We all have our stories about the time that Michael masterfully problem-solved an issue or gave helpful advice and support through the hurdles of the program. He tells me, “There is always so much going on. I’m not here to put obstacles, I’m here to lift the obstacles.” However, as we spoke more about the university, research, disciplines, and beyond, it became even clearer why Michael is such a wonderful addition. Amidst the bureaucratic noise and neoliberal clamor of the institution, Michael is a melody of curiosity and love for learning. For that, and much more, we are a better department because he is with us.

Karen H. Lee is a second-year graduate student in the Sociology department. She is broadly interested in intergroup relations and processes particularly as they relate to race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Her current research draws upon experimental methods and large-scale survey data analysis to examine public perceptions of ethnoracial protest. She’s also a co-coordinator of the Race and Ethnicity working group in the Sociology department.

Thank you to those who served as the first members of the SGSC in its inaugural year: Shannon Malone Gonzalez (Chair), Carmen Gutierrez and Shannon Malone Gonzalez (Student Minority Liaisons), Michael Garcia (Pre-Candidacy Student Representative), Corey McZeal (Candidacy Student Representative), Nino Bariola (International Student Representative), and Beth Prosnitz (Representative to the GSA).

Also honored this year were Shannon Malone Gonzalez and Carmen Gutierrez for their service to the department and Valerie Goldstein who completed her 25th year with the department!

On Friday, April 20th, Boston University Sociology Professor Julian Go visited UT Austin for a public lecture on “The Origins of Police Militarization in the United States” and a workshop with graduate students. The event was co-sponsored by the Urban Ethnography Lab as well as the Power, History, and Society (PHS), Crime, Law, and Deviance (CLD), and Race and Ethnicity (R&E) working groups. Dr. Go’s discussion with graduate students focused on three strands that came out of students’ questions: how to frame research questions and projects, how to combine historical comparative work and ethnography, and finally his work on post-colonial theory.

Professor Julian Go lectures on the origins of U.S. police militarization. (photo by Harel Shapira)

In a meeting with sociology graduate students who do research in sites as diverse as Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Tunisia, Lebanon, India, and Nepal, Dr. Go offered advice on how to sell projects to a discipline that is often parochial. He suggested students frame their work in terms of how specific sites can help us understand the United States or give insight into broader theoretical mechanisms. In more general terms, Dr. Go pushed students to avoid developing research projects such that they already know what they are going to find. He advised: “Make sure to design the project in a way that it’s set up for surprises, and you can manage the surprise.” The most interesting findings, according to Dr. Go, come from these surprises, and research projects should be set up to capture multiple possibilities.

Students also asked more specific questions about doing historical comparative work and ethnography. Dr. Go said that he saw archival research as a kind of historical ethnography, using newspapers, diaries, and other sources to reconstruct the universes of meaning of a different time and culture. He drew a similar parallel to ethnography in terms of how to enter a site. He suggested that like ethnography, archival research should begin with a critical entry way or person, and then use a kind of snowball sampling to see where that entry point leads you. He also advocated for the integration of historical work into ethnographic research, something he said is currently lacking in the field. Doing this successfully, he argued, requires making sure the historicization operates from concepts that are relevant to the contemporary site, maintaining an analytic continuity between past and present. “Think about the best ethnographies and best historical work,” he said, “and think about what it would mean to put them together.”

Finally, Dr. Go spoke about his own work on post-colonial theory. He said that this epistemological challenge arose because sociology as a discipline has been tethered to the interests of empire. In this account, early sociology became interested in race and social order precisely because they were interested in what natives were doing in colonies. Though sociologists disavow this early racist work, some of the same analytic tendencies persist, including a bifurcation that separates “us” from “them,” “here” from “there,” and the metropole from the colony. Dr. Go argued that sociologists lose a lot with this approach.

Dr. Go’s lecture later in the day provided an excellent example of how a post-colonial perspective allows for analytical richness. He showed how ongoing processes of police militarization in the United States cannot be understood without looking at their roots in techniques used under American imperialism to police their colonies. As such, he suggested we should re-theorize police militarization as “colonial counter-insurgenization,” allowing for an understanding of how techniques of control developed in colonies were transferred to domestic urban spaces and organized around the same racialized logic. Both the lecture and Dr. Go’s workshop were thought-provoking and inspiring for attendees.

Alex Diamond is a first-year student in the Sociology Department. His research interests center on the construction of citizenship in the post-conflict transition in areas of rural Colombia that were previously under insurgent control.